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Algeria

Essay by   •  March 11, 2011  •  1,015 Words (5 Pages)  •  1,298 Views

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The colonists and colonized are two groups that are at complete arms with each other. The colonists, who were wealthy, white foreigners, inhabited certain lands and enforced their capitalistic views on the people who lived there. These people were the colonized and were often referred to as "natives". While the colonists lived in luxury and comfort, the oppressed colonized people were living in starvation. These colonists believed in the ways of the colonial system and were greedy compared to the colonized, as opposed to the colonized people, who believe closely in their customs and traditions.

The relationship between these two factions is extremely violent. This is very much due to the fact that the colonists came into the colonized people's land and unjustly took over them, which led to oppressing the citizens within it. As Fanon states," The violence which governed the ordering of the colonial worldÐ'...this same violence will be vindicated when the colonized swarm into forbidden cities to blow the colonial world to smithereens." Their relationship is also violent due the colonists' relentless attacks on the colonized, making is as though they possessed no values. Fanon comments on this by saying, "The native is declared impervious to ethics, representing not only the absence of values but also the negation of values.

The colonized intellectual was one of the more intelligent colonized individuals that had originally begun to accept "the abstract, universal values of the colonizer." This individual was not like the colonizer, though, since he was blind to the truth and wanted both sides to live in peace. The colonized intellectual is one that then has an epiphany, realizing that there is no reason for this oppression by the colonizer, since the lives of the white men have no more worth than his own people. When this individual touches base with his own people, many of his idols that were pounded into his head such as individualism and egoism are destroyed. As Fanon also states, "he will also discover the strength of village assemblies, the power of the people's commissions and the extraordinary productiveness of neighborhood and section committee meetings.

Judging from the overall language of the text, Fanon appreciates the colonized intellectual's ability to see his people's struggle and his commitment to his cause, but the author seems so is skeptical of him as well. The colonized intellectual seems to have a hard time viewing the problems at hand in the same way as most of his comrades do and at some points embody feelings of doubt. Just as Fanon states, "He tends to lose sight of the unity of the movement and in the event of failure at the local level he succumbs to doubt, even despair." Although the colonized individual cannot fully break away from his routes, the author seems to have a respect for his courage to see the truth, rather than conform to the colonizer's way of life.

Although when democracy was first instilled in Nigeria, there was a greater approval rating than in the following year, the greater majority of the Nigerian people still favored democracy. If we look one of the polls taken for support for democracy and satisfaction for democracy between 2000 and 2001, the support only dropped 10% while the satisfaction level dropped 29%. This is partially due to the fact that in 2000, Nigerians were just coming off of a dictatorship rule. The people were not as realistic in their ideas about democracy as they were in 2001. Also having established a new democracy, there

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